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Lauren Bridle

Trying to hold back tears as the end of April sees friends and people leave Ottawa to various places. It was an opportunity to see Lauren Bridle for the final time on Monday afternoon. She is finished her studies at Carleton University and going back to her hometown of Toronto. It’s been a tremendous four years having you come on as a co-host on my radio show. You got exposed with the Canadian and general indie music that I got to play as well with the classic Cantopop music that I foolishly played within my radio show. I’m glad that you were able to tolerate it. It’s a no-brainer that you got to meet and interview a particular musician and a few bands who are based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Unfortunately, the photos I used from The Impossible Project didn’t turn out too well. I’m still having trouble setting the bright/dark levels from the Polaroid SX-70 camera. The funny photo shown above was basically a selfie within a selfie. I actually goofed up as I didn’t take the photo from my iPhone. Got to love my Hudson’s Bay phone case by Gelaskin. End the slight shameless plug.

As a parting gift, I gave her a popular Korean drink called Soju. The one I got is called Charm Soju and it’s available at select LCBO locations. You will see a photo from below. I’m not big on drinking and decided to give something unique before she leaves off.

Lastly, all I can say that even though I didn’t get a Journalism degree but felt like I was the teacher when I brought you into wackiness of campus community radio. We also enjoyed the same interests with tea (DAVIDsTEA), a bit of technology (Apple) and a bit of fashion. You did get to meet some great people during our time on radio. We never made our goodbyes on the radio. This blog entry is my goodbye to you.
Good luck to you in your endeavours and we will meet again in the future.

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It’s been an exciting weekend with the lion dance performances and continuing to celebrate Chinese New Year. Monday was an off-day for the lion dance troupe but I had the radio show with the annual Chinese New Year show. Lauren returned to do the Chinese New Year show as I had Candice join me on last year’s edition.
Being year of the horse, it’s Lauren’s favourite animal as she kind of owns a horse. I got to explain the strengths and weaknesses of anyone who’s born year of the horse.

We also got to talk about food and there’s one I’m not fond of and it’s red bean. I know I will get some backlash as it’s their favourite food and dessert. To keep some happy, I played the song by the late Teresa Teng as part of the CNY show.

As usual, there were the familiar Cantopop tracks played and there were several band and song names with the word, ‘horse‘ in it. I was able to find some Canadian indie tracks with the particular animal name.
The best “horse” song would have to be Horses Fell by The Darcys. It’s still new but the band has become a favourite of mine.
I took a couple of instant photos by Impossible and finally got to use the gold frame. There are a few from Sunday, February 3rd. You can see the photos from below.
You can check the playlist over at this link and the audio is posted below.

Lastly, don’t forget about the Winterlude Lunar New Year Parade on Ottawa Chinatown. Happening on Saturday, February 8, 2014 and starts at 1pm. Hope to see you there.

January is coming to an end and it’s been a slow month in terms of new music releases. This is a short entry for this week.
This week’s radio show was a retrospective show as I relived some moments from past seasons (there’s a hint to this as I told some good friends). Relived some moments as I played You Say Party, Dan Mangan, and Malajube.
Joining me as usual was Lauren and we got to mention how we got to interview Mangan when he released his album, Oh Fortune and it was her first music interview. As for Malajube, it was quite fitting to play Montreal -40C as we’re still continuing with cold temperatures. Aside from that, the reason for playing them was that I’m still fond of seeing them live in Montreal at a rooftop.
Also on the show were new music from Phantogram, Jeremy Fisher and Robyn Dell’Unto. The audio for this week’s radio show can be listened below. You can check the playlist over at this link.

Chinese New Year is happening this Friday. It will be a great time to celebrate the year of the horse.
Have a great week!

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As the so-called polar vortex returns to freeze up Ottawa and the surrounding regions of Ontario, this week’s radio show was more of a full music show. The theme was warming up and listen to new songs as we deal with minus double digits again.
There was new music from the likes of The Balconies, Teenage Kicks, Tokyo Police and Warpaint. Also played this week were Hurt Me Now by Austra and If I Were A Ship by Hey Ocean! Both tracks were recently released as music videos. Towards the end, a slight blast from the past as I decided to play Lykke Li. She will be releasing a new album sometime this year. It’s been three years since her last album was released. Played was one of my favourite songs by her. It was I Follow Rivers and it was The Magician remix.
Lauren joined me on the show as usual but she’s under the weather and at least made an effort to be on the airwaves.

The playlist for this week’s show is over at this link. You can listen to the audio below.

After two week of the best of 2013, it’s back to the usual music show and being live on CKCU. OK, there was another hour but it was pre-taped and the playlist will be coming for it. January is usually thought to be a slow month in terms of new music. Apparently, I’m wrong as this week’s radio show had some new music being played. Certain bands haven’t released for four years and there is some buzz as we expect new material.

Returning to the radio show for the second half of the live show was Lauren. Back from her Christmas holidays. It was great that she was there because there were new songs from Coeur de Pirate and announced on social media & music sites, a new song from Tokyo Police Club. The band will be releasing the album, Forcefield on March 25th. The verdict on the new song is quite different than previous song on their albums. It sounds more poppy and not as rockin’ from the previous works.

As for Coeur de Pirate, she’s releasing a new album which is mainly cover songs and based on a CBC French TV show, Trauma. For the first time, Beatrice Martin (known as Coeur de Pirate) releases an English album through cover songs.
Also played were Crissi Cochrane as she released a live track which was posted on YouTube (Little Sway on January 28th), Robyn Dell’Unto (Little Lines on January 28th) and Warpaint (second self-titled album on January 21st).

The playlist for the second hour is at this link. You can listen to the audio from below.

2013 wasn’t finished yet on this week’s first radio show of 2014 on CKCU-FM. This time, it was the Top 10 Non-Canadian Indie Music of 2013 and considered to be the fourth part of the year end countdown. It’s become a yearly tradition to do two different year-end countdowns. One strictly for Canadian music and the other being non-Canadian music. The non-Canadian list is shorter as I place more emphasis on the Canadian music scene.
Myself and Lauren were counting the best albums from outside of Canada. There were good releases from the top 10 played.
Bands like The Naked and Famous, Vampire Weekend, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The National had highly anticipated albums and there were surprises from HAIM as their popularity exploded in 2013.

There are two different versions of the countdown. The one aired on CKCU was the top 10 while the entry from the Best of 2013 page is the top 13 Non-Canadian Indie music of 2013.
The radio show version had three new Canadian indie tracks for 2014, they were Crissi Cochrane, The Balconies and Silkken Laumann.
The blog version has Hot Natured (recommended by the host of CKCU’s The Cloud), Best Coast and Foals played on the top 13 of 2013. At the end, leftovers of 2013 were “Your Life Is a Lie” by MGMT and Byegone by Volcano Choir.

To check out the CKCU-FM version, you can go to this link. The On-Demand audio is available to listen over there.
To view the full list, go to The Top 50 of 2013 page is over at this link.
This wraps up the best of music for 2013. Onwards to 2014!Continue reading →

It was an epic day as I was on the airwaves from 7-10am and then the regular show at 11am on CKCU-FM. First, it was the Monday Special Blend and I was joined by Canadian Spaces host, Chris White as we had Shannon Rose & The Thorns. Rose has a new song which is fitting for Christmas and it’s called North Star. She performed three songs live on the airwaves. First was North Star, the second was Phoenix and lastly, a Bing Crosby cover song, I’ll Be Home For Christmas. Luckily, Ottawa didn’t bear brunt of the ice storm which hit Toronto on the weekend. Overall, it was a great morning to have guests like Chris White and Shannon Rose. From the image above, it was shot on a Polaroid.
The next show to help out was The Filibuster and we basically played Christmas songs ranging from the popular one to Metal to Canadian indie music. It was a nice mix of tunes to play as I was joined host, Ben James for the Filibuster.
To my own show, I played the favourites from Jill Barber, Basia Bulat and Nat Jay. It’s become a yearly tradition to play those wonderful festive songs. There were a few new tracks from Mounties, The Mountain and the Trees and a new Said The Whale.
You can check the playlist over at the this link. You can listen to the audio below. It will be a lengthy listen. Happy Holidays!Continue reading →